The Sustainable Computing Lab

Christoph Fabianek: Semantic Container for Data Mobility
2019-11-20 15:00 - 16:30 (Europe/Paris)
An enormous wealth of data is being created in our increasingly digitized life and economies, but the majority of this data is either being monopolized or shared for questionable purposes rather than facilitating innovation. One of the main issues that inhibits data reuse and the emergence of vibrant data markets is the lack of standard mechanisms for the execution of controlled transactions between data providers and consumers, including efficient provisioning of data and associated services. Consequently, many potential data providers find it difficult to turn data into viable business models. At the same time, data consumers face challenges accessing heterogeneous data provided via various mechanisms and have limited means to trace data provenance and ensure data quality. Semantic Containers aim to tackle both issues by facilitating controlled transactions through an integrated set of methods and capabilities. Specifically, they package data, semantic descriptions, and processing capabilities into executable and shareable containers.

Elena Simperl: Qrowd and the city: Designing people-centric smart cities
2019-11-19 18:00 - 19:30 (Europe/Paris)
Smart cities are as much about the needs, expectations and values of the people they serve as they are about the underlying technology. In this talk, I am going to present several areas of system design where human and social factors play a critical role, from fostering participation to augmented intelligence and responsible innovation. I will present ongoing challenges, solutions and opportunities, drawing from recent studies in Qrowd, a Horizon 2020 programme proposing a humane AI approach for transport and mobility.

About the speaker:
Elena Simperl is a professor of computer science at the University of Southampton in the UK. She works in the department of Electronics and Computer Science (ECS)
in the Web and Internet Science (WAIS) lab. She is also one of the Directors of the Web Science Institute and a Turing Fellow.
More details: http://elenasimperl.eu/

Nataliia Bielova: Detecting third-party tracking and GDPR violations in Web applications
2019-11-07 15:00 - 16:30 (Europe/Paris)
Third-party Web tracking has been extensively studied over the last decade. In our work, we focus on two problems that address third-party tracking in Web applications and GDPR impact on trackers.

First, we study detection of third-party tracking. Most of previous studies and user tools rely on filter lists. However, there has always been a suspicion that lists miss many trackers. In this paper, we propose an alternative method to detect trackers inspired by analyzing behavior of invisible pixels. By crawling 84,658 webpages from 8,744 domains, we detect that third-party invisible pixels are widely deployed: they are present on more than 94.51% of domains and constitute 35.66% of all third-party images. We propose a fine-grained behavioral classification of tracking based on the analysis of invisible pixels. We use this classification to detect new categories of tracking and uncover new collaborations between domains on the dataset of 4,2M third-party requests. We demonstrate that two popular methods to detect tracking, based on EasyList&EasyPrivacy and on Disconnect lists respectively miss 25.22% and 30.34% of the trackers that we detect. Moreover, we find that if we combine all three lists, 379,245 requests originated from 8,744 domains still track users on 68.70% of websites.

Second, we analyse GDPR impact on third-party trackers. GDPR defines rights for data subjects (users) and obligations for data controllers (trackers) but it is unclear how subjects and controllers interact concretely. We investigate whether it is safe for a data subject to exercise the right of access of her own data by analysing how subject access request procedures are implemented in third-party tracking services. We observe that some trackers use unsafe or doubtful procedures to authenticate data subjects: the most common flaw is the use of authentication based on a copy of the subject’s national identity card transmitted over an insecure channel.

BUCH WIEN – Lange Nacht der Bücher
2019-11-06 21:00 - 22:30 UTC
ARBEITSTITEL: „Wie die Digitalisierung unsere Welt verändern“
Im Rahmen der BUCH WIEN – Lange Nacht der Bücher
Mittwoch, 6. November 2019, 21 Uhr – ca. 22.30 Uhr, Mastercard-Bühne, Messe Wien, Halle D

DISKUTIERENDE:
– Ingrid Brodnig, Publizistin
– Konrad Paul Liessmann, Philosoph
– Christian Rau, Mastercard Österreich
– Sarah Spiekermann, Wirtschaftsinformatikerin
MODERATORIN: Lou Lorenz-Dittlbacher

David Garcia: Online privacy as a complex phenomenon
2019-10-30 15:00 - 16:30 (Europe/Paris)
Preserving individual control over private information is one of the rising concerns in our digital society. Online social networks exist in application ecosystems that allow them to access data from other services, for example gathering contact lists through mobile phone applications. Such data access might allow social networking sites to create shadow profiles with information about non-users that has been inferred from information shared by the users of the social network. I will present our work on testing this privacy risk for sexual orientation, marital status, and location inference in Twitter and Friendster, a disappeared social network. Our findings illustrate that individuals are not in full control of their online privacy and that sharing personal data with a social networking site is a complex decision that is collectively mediated by the decisions of others.

Joint Workshop: New Challenges in Law and Technology
2019-10-23 15:15 - 17:15 UTC
This joint workshop on New Challenges in Law and Technology between the Department of Innovation and Digitalisation in Law at the University of Vienna and the Privacy and Sustainable Computing Lab at WU Wien.
The workshop will take place on 23 October 2019 from 15:15 to 17:15 at Schenkenstraße 4, 1010 Wien. The purpose of the workshop is to exchange ideas between both research groups and discuss potential future research projects.

Paul Eberstaller, RIS+
Antoni Napieralski, Smart Borders and Data Protection
Felix Zopf, GDPR as an instrument of market harmonization
Treatment Implications of a Techno-Social Governance Phenomenon
Soheil Human, Human-centricity, GDPR, and the Future of Digital Consenting
Paola Lopez, Predictive Models and Automated Decision-Making: Equal
Ben Wagner, Situating space: Automation and Bias in digital mapping interfaces

All titles are working titles and subject to change.
Please send a brief note to Ben Wagner <ben.wagner@wu.ac.at> if you want to attend the workshop.

MyData Austria Meetup #5
2019-10-22 18:30 - 21:00 UTC
In this meetup we will shed light on the topic of data as a property: is it possible to own data, how can data or usage rights for that data be sold and what are the implications?
Agenda:
1. Christoph Fabianek: “Semantic Container for Data Mobility”
2. Soheil Human: “Human-centricity vs. End-user Empowerment: The Future of a Value-based Data Economy”
3. Robert Mitwicki: “Purpose based services”
4. Michael Shea: Fishbowl discussion about Data as a Human Right

Michael Platzer: Fake Data - An Unexpected Ally in the Fight for Privacy
2019-06-19 15:00 - 16:30 UTC
Dr. Michael Platzer, founder & CEO of Mostly AI, will talk about the underestimated re-identification risk and the limitations of existing anonymization techniques in the big data era, as well as present latest research on Generative AI, and how it surprisingly enables GDPR-compliant big data sharing.

MyData Hub Austria: Meetup #3
2019-06-17 18:00 - 20:30 UTC
In this meetup we will shed light on the topic of data as a property: is it possible to own data, how can data or usage rights for that data be sold and what are the implications?
This is a co-hosted event with VDSG (Vienna Data Science Group).
Agenda:
1. Clara Landler: Welcome & Introduction
2. Christoph Fabianek: Semantic Container for Data Mobility, Closing presentation of FFG funded project
3. Soheil Human, Rita Gsenger, Kemal Ozan Aybar, Niklas Kirchner: short talks on:
– “End-user Empowerment: An Interdisciplinary Perspective”,
– “Digital Inequality: Call for Socio-technical Privacy Management Approaches”,
– “Context-Sensitivity of [Informed] Consent: The Emergence of Genetic Data Markets”.
4. Michael Shea: Fishbowl discussion about Data as a Human Right

Workshop Engineering Accountable Information Systems (ECIS 2019, Stockholm)
2019-06-10 10:00 - 17:00 UTC
Workshop Program
* 10:00 – 10 :15 Welcome* 10:15 – 11:15 Session 1: Accountability and Inequality* 10:15 – 10:30 Digital Inequality: Call for Socio-technical Privacy Management Approaches (Kemal Ozan Aybar, Soheil Human and Rita Gsenger)* 10:30 – 11:15 Discussion on the paper and wider issues* 11:15 – 12:15 Session 2: Accountability and Digital Geography * 11:15 – 11:30 The System Bias of Geographic Information Systems (Ben Wagner, Till Winkler, Svitlana Vakulenko)* 11:15 – 12:15 Discussion on the paper and wider issues* 12:15 – 13:15 Lunch Break*13:15 – 14:15 Session 3: Engineering Accountability*13:15 – 13:30 Accountability in the IoT: Systems, Law, and Ways Forward (Jat Singh)*13:30 – 14:15 Discussion on the paper and wider issues around it* 14:15 – 15:15 Session 4: Accountability and Consent* 14:15 – 14:30 Context-Sensitivity of Informed Consent: The Emergence of Genetic Data Markets (Niklas Kirchner, Soheil Human and Gustaf Neumann)* 14:30 – 15:15 Discussion on the paper and wider issues around it* 15:15 – 15:30 Coffee Break* 15:30 – 17:00 Session 5: Conclusions on Accountable Systems and Next Steps* 17:00 – 17:15 Goodbye
Further details about the workshop are available here: http://ecis2019.eu/programme/workshops-and-tutorials/engineering-accountable-information-systems-1.421417
Organised with the support of:

Project DITAS, H2020 grant 731945

The new AVMSD and platform regulation: challenges for national legislators and regulators.
2019-06-03 14:00 - 17:00 UTC
The EU’s new Audiovisual Media Services Directive (AVMSD) is an important step for platform regulation in regulation. While new provisions embedded in the AVMSD attempt to increase transparency and reduce content which is seen a problematic online, they also require online service providers to change their terms of services (ToS). This leads to considerable challenges for national legislators and regulators in interpreting the AVMSD in a way which supports fundamental human rights.
To discuss these issues, we have we have invited some of the leading European experts on this topics to participate in a workshop to discuss these challenges:

Lubos Kuklis, Chair of the European Regulators Group for Audiovisual Media Services (ERGA)
Joan Barata, Intermediary Liability Fellow, Center for Internet and Society, Stanford
Krisztina Rozgonyi, Assistant Professor, Media Governance and Media Industries Research Lab, University of Vienna
Susanne Lackner, Vice Chair, Austrian Communications Authority
Ben Wagner, Assistant Professor, Information Systems and Society, Vienna University of Economics and Business

As space is limited, please register for the event with Hannah Waltl <mis-sek@wu.ac.at> if you wish to attend.

Ben Wagner: Content Moderation in Practice
2019-05-15 15:00 - 16:30 UTC
What does content moderation of online platforms actually look like in practice? How much content moderation takes places manually and how much is automated? The following talk will provide an overview of existing content moderation on different European platforms, as well as the challenges and difficulties in measuring the effectiveness of these practices.
As such, the talk will discuss both empirical and theoretical challenges, attempting to provide a broad overview for a primarily academic audience. We look forward to seeing you there!

Sylvie Delacroix: Beware of 'Algorithmic Regulation'
2019-05-08 15:00 - 16:30 UTC
Among the structural elements that enable social media platforms to durably influence our moods and behaviour, their answering a widespread desire to be liked and accepted – a desire which is seldom transparent to us – greatly increases their manipulative power. So does their ability to harvest fine-grained information about their users (and acquaintances). This data puts such platforms in a position where they can not only covertly influence our thoughts, moods and behaviour: they can do so in a way that is maximally effective given our respective traits, vulnerabilities etc. This paper argues that if we are to stand any chance of taming these platforms’ considerable manipulative potential, some conceptual spring-cleaning is needed.
First, we need to stop confusing regulatory power and regulation. Whereas in mechanics or cybernetics there is no need to distinguish between the two -since there are no agents whose autonomy is infringed by regulation- when the concept of regulation is applied to human behaviour this distinction becomes crucial, and hinges upon the concept of authority. Since social media platforms do not – yet – claim authority, they do not regulate us: they have regulatory power over us. Our task is to regulate that power.
To succeed in the latter task, we also need to acknowledge that the type of influence exercised by social media platforms is not merely non-deliberative: it is also covert. While the former is often unproblematic from an ethical/legal perspective, the latter not only threatens our right to freedom of thought, it also compromises our commitment to moral equality.
Read the full paper here: https://papers.ssrn.com/sol3/papers.cfm?abstract_id=3327191

Ben Wagner: Einsatz von Algorithmen in der Arbeitsvermittlung
2019-04-29 18:00 - 21:00 UTC
Die Digitalisierung führt zu tiefgreifenden Veränderungen der Arbeitswelt und der Arbeitsorganisation. Die durch den vermehrten Einsatz der Technologie verursachten Veränderungen manifestieren sich nicht nur in der Entgrenzung von Arbeitszeit und Arbeitsort sowie als Phänomen des plattformbasierten Arbeitens (gig economy, crowdwork), sondern auch in der Arbeitsvermittlung.

Seit Jahren können wir den Trend beobachten, dass Online-Jobbörsen, Headhunter und Personalabteilungen vermehrt „Recruitment Algorithmen“ bei der Suche nach geeigneten Jobkandidaten einsetzen. Bei den verwendeten Tools handelt es sich in der Regel um „Automated Decision Making (ADM)-Systeme“, welche autonom die Bewerber klassifizieren und allenfalls geeignete Kandidaten für eine gewisse Stelle vorschlagen. Dem Versprechen der verbesserten Vermittlungsleistung durch den Einsatz von Assistenzsystemen, die die Mitarbeiter bei deren Entscheidungen unterstützen, ist nunmehr in einem Pilotprojekt auch das Arbeitsmarktservice Österreich (AMS) nachgegangen und entwickelte zwei Assistenzsysteme. Der erste Algorithmus wurde zum Zweck des Matchings zwischen Arbeitsuchenden und offenen Stellen konzipiert; der andere zur Abschätzung der Arbeitsmarktchancen von Arbeitssuchenden.

Die Entwicklung gibt Anlass, die eingesetzte Technologie, die gesellschaftspolitischen, wirtschaftlichen und ethischen Folgen ihres Einsatzes sowie die damit verbundenen Rechtsfragen näher zu beleuchten.

Veranstalter
Institut für Innovation und Digitalisierung im Recht der Universität Wien

Organisationsteam
Institut für Innovation und Digitalisierung im Recht
Nikolaus Forgó | Žiga Škorjanc
Kontakt und Anmeldung
ID-organisation@univie.ac.at

Programm

Montag 29. April

18:00 – 18:30
Begrüßung
Nikolaus Forgó
(Institut für Innovation und Digitalisierung im Recht, Universität Wien)

18:30 – 19:30
Opening Statements & Discussion
Univ.-Prof. Dr. Wilfried Gansterer
(Dekan der Fakultät für Informatik, Universität Wien)

Univ.-Prof. DDr. Matthias Karmasin
(Institut für vergleichende Medien- und Kommunikationsforschung (CMC) der Österreichischen Akademie der Wissenschaften und der Alpen-Adria-Universität Klagenfurt)

Univ.-Prof. Dr. Wolfgang Mazal
(Institut für Arbeits- und Sozialrecht, Universität Wien)

Ass.-Prof. Dr. Ben Wagner
(Institute for Management Information Systems, WU Wien)

Dr. Marius Wilk
(Leiter des Büros des Vorstandes, Arbeitsmarktservice Österreich)

19:30 – 21:00
Empfang

Gizem Gültekin Várkonyi: Technical and Legal Interoperability of Social Robots and the GDPR
2019-04-10 15:00 - 16:30 UTC
More personal data means more personal services at today’s data driven market that does not seem to change much in close future. Embodied and connected AI technologies gain and drain much of personal data made available by human. A futuristic approach for robotic applications points that robots at personal use might become real within this century. General purpose robot assisting person’s daily life activities is demanded and supported with scientific developments which are supported with huge investments. Social robot, a type of service robot, could interact with human in a humanoid way and is indeed able to collect personal data to personalize its services which are currently delivered in healthcare and entertainment sectors at a limited level. However, living with such artificial-social personas raise some concerns regarding protection of human’s private life. Even the most updated personal data protection law, the GDPR, may fall short to ensure full protection of a social robot user’s personal data both because of the technical realities and of the legal constraints. The fact is that, these robots are able to persuade human to disclose even more personal data, thanks to, for example, their physical presence, emotional interaction abilities, and ability to learn from actual data (e.g. via Reinforcement Learning) . In this talk, I will present how the GDPR is challenged by the current developments in the AI field, and how single interpretation of some of the GDPR rules could be difficult in connection with those developments.

Alexander Sander: Open Platforms for Open Data?
2019-04-03 15:00 - 16:00 UTC
FSFE has launched the campaign “Public Money, Public code”, which
promotes legislation requiring that publicly financed software developed
for the public sector is made publicly available under a Free and Open
Source Software licence. The demand to support free software is also
important for the open data debate. More and more administrations make
open data available, which is used by different actors in different
ways. However, these actors often resort to closed source solutions,
which contradicts the idea of openness.
The following talk will discuss challenges and contradictions with this model as well as providing ways forward on how to shape the open data debate in a way that systematically promotes the public interest.
Alexander Sander is the EU Public Policy Programme Manager for the Free Software Foundation Europe and based in Berlin.

Florian Cech: AMS Algorithm and Accountable Systems Workshop
2019-04-02 15:30 - 17:30 UTC
This meeting of the Lab working group on accountable systems will discuss issues related to understanding the implementation of an algorithm which categorises recipients of unemployment benefits in Austria by the Austrian unemployment agency AMS.
Florian Cech from TU Wien will provide a short introduction with an overview of the current state of the art on the AMS categorisation algorithm.
Previous workshops on accountable systems include:

26 February 2019 – Accountability and Emerging Technologies with Cambridge University at Alan Turing Institute in London: https://www.privacylab.at/event/accountability-and-emerging-technologies-workshop/
22 January 2019 – Developing Accountable Systems with Complexity Science Hub Vienna: https://privacylab.at/event/csh-workshop-developing-accountable-systems/

Sarah Spiekermann 'Digitale Ethik'
2019-04-01 19:00 - 20:30 UTC | avatar-large-2
Apps, die unaufgefordert Informationen zuschicken; Autos, die von Google-Rechnern gesteuert werden, und Sprachassistenten, die Bestellungen für uns vornehmen; Künstliche Intelligenz und Big Data sind Teil unseres Lebens. Doch was macht die Digitalisierung mit uns? Sarah Spiekermann fordert deshalb ein radikales Umdenken: Wir brauchen eine Technik, die uns dient, statt uns zu beherrschen. Die Digitalisierung darf nicht nur vom Gewinnstreben getrieben sein, sondern muss Werte fördern. In ihrem Buch entwickelt sie eine Ethik für die Technologien der Zukunft. Sie erklärt, was das Digitale wirklich kann und was wir alle tun können, um eine positive und selbstbestimmte Digitalisierung zu leben.

Präsentation von und mit
Sarah Spiekermann ist seit 2009 Universitätsprofessorin an der WU-Wien, wo sie dem Institut für Wirtschaftsinformatik & Gesellschaft vorsteht und 2016 das ‘Privacy and Sustainable Computing Lab’ gegründet hat. Ihre Karriere begann bei Silicon-Valley-Unternehmen, von wo aus sie zur Strategieberatung A.T. Kearney wechselte. Später leitete sie das Forschungszentrum Internetökonomie an der Humboldt-Universität Berlin. Spiekermann hat sich aufgrund ihrer langjährigen Forschungen zu einer profilierten Kritikerin der IT-Branche und ihres Menschenbildes entwickelt, die aber auch Lösungen anbietet. Spiekermann ist eine vielgefragte Keynote-Speakerin und Gesprächspartnerin der Politik und der Medien.

Volkstheatergespräche mit Corinna Milborn
2019-03-31 11:00 - 14:00 UTC
Digitalität und Demokratie

Die Digitalisierung verändert unser gesellschaftliches Leben auf vielen Ebenen. Digitale Plattformen agieren als Medienportale, organisieren den Zugang zu Wissen und sammeln bei jedem Klick eine Unmenge an Daten. Big Data heißt dieser wertvolle neue Rohstoff, den die User/innen bereitwillig generieren. Fake News und Bots nehmen Einfluss auf unsere Wahrnehmung von Wirklichkeit. Das Internet der Dinge eröffnet neue Möglichkeiten der Überwachung.
Welche Rolle kann die Zivilgesellschaft spielen, damit die Digitalisierung den Interessen der Allgemeinheit dient? Welche Forderungen soll sie stellen, um die technische Entwicklung im Sinne der Wahrung der Grund- und Menschenrechte zu gestalten? Was kann jede/r einzelne User/in tun, um das Internet nicht privaten oder polizeilichen Interessen zu überlassen, sondern eine offene Sphäre des Austauschs und der verantwortungsvollen Communities zu gestalten?
Corinna Milborn, Co-Autorin von Change the Game. Wie wir uns das Netz von Facebook und Google zurückerobern, skizziert mit ihren Gästen Wege zur digitalen Mündigkeit:
Dr. Sarah Spiekermann-Hoff lehrt und forscht an der Wirtschaftsuniversität Wien, wo sie dem Institut für Wirtschaftsinformatik und Gesellschaft vorsteht. Sie publiziert regelmäßig wissenschaftliche Artikel zu den Themen werteorientierte IT-Entwicklung, Privacy und Kontrolle im digitalen Raum und veröffentlichte u.a. die Sachbücher Ethical IT Innovation und Networks of Control. 2016 ist sie vom Ingenieursverband IEEE damit betraut worden, den ersten Standardisierungsprozess zu leiten, der sich mit ethischer Technikgestaltung beschäftigt. Auf der Website der Tageszeitung Der Standard betreibt sie den Blog Die ethische Maschine. Am 1. April erscheint ihr neues Buch Digitale Ethik. Ein Wertesystem für das 21. Jahrhundert.
Angelika Adensamer, Juristin und Kriminologin, arbeitet als Policy Advisor bei epicenter.works, einer NGO, die für die Verteidigung der Grundrechte im digitalen Zeitalter eintritt. Außerdem ist sie Mitglied des Datenschutzrats und des Netzwerks Kritische Rechtswissenschaften. Sie publiziert zu den Themen Überwachungsbefugnisse, Bürger/innenrechte, Freiheit und Sicherheit.
Stefanie Wuschitz arbeitet als Künstlerin, Forscherin und Hacktivistin zu den Themen Open Source Technologie, Peer Production und Feminismus. Sie studierte Transmediale Kunst an der Universität für Angewandte Kunst, gefolgt von einem Master an der TISCH School of the Arts an der New York University, und promovierte zu „Feminist Hackerspaces. A Research on Feminist Space Collectives in Open Culture“ an der TU. Seither ist sie an verschiedenen österreichischen und internationalen wissenschaftlichen Projekten und Kunstausstellungen beteiligt. 2009 gründete sie den feministischen Hackerspace Miss Baltazar’s Laboratory.
Achtung, an diesem Sonntag ist Umstellung auf Sommerzeit!
http://www.volkstheater.at/stueck/digitalitaet-und-demokratie/

Ursula Pachl: Privacy and data security
2019-03-22 10:00 - 22:30 UTC
What is the role for privacy and data security in the European Union? As part of the course on the Marketing and Society Interface by Bernadette Kamleitner and Renato Regis, Ursula Pachl will be giving a talk which is open to a wider audience.

Ursula Pachl, Deputy Director General, BEUC – The European Consumers’ Organisation, Brussels. Ms. Pachl leads BEUC’s work on the Digital Single Market and on consumer rights and enforcement. She is also responsible for horizontal and strategic policy issues, represents BEUC in the European Commission’s REFIT platform and co-ordinates BEUC’s law enforcement project ‘COJEF’. Prior to working for BEUC, Ms. Pachl worked at the Austrian Federal Ministry of Health and Consumer Protection in Vienna and at the Austrian Consumer Information Association as a member of the Consumer Advisory Board. BEUC represents 42 independent national consumer associations from 31 European countries. The primary task of BEUC is to act as a strong consumer voice in Brussels and to try to ensure that consumer interests are given their proper weight in the development of all Community policies.

Niels ten Oever: a Net of Rights? - the Inscription and Subversion of Values in Transnational Internet Infrastructure Governance
2019-03-20 15:00 - 16:30 UTC
In this talk I will show how fundamental characteristics of the Internet architecture, such as equality and innovation, have been subverted since the 1990s. While Internet platforms and applications are critically assessed in the public debate, the Internet architecture is widely perceived as engine for innovation and as enabler of rights and freedoms. This view reflects an imaginary that guides the co-production of policy and technology that can be traced back to the early phases of the development of the Internet, and which is still prominent in one the main governance bodies of the Internet: the Internet Engineering Taskforce (IETF). In the IETF, the co-production of the Internet architecture is guided by the architectural principles of permissionless innovation, openness, and the end-to-end principle. After the privatization of the Internet architecture, the interplay between permissionless innovation, openness, and the end-to-end principle reconfigured and subverted the Internet architecture’s affordance structure. To show this I draw on media studies, science and technology studies and international political economy, and by using a combination of qualitative and quantitative methods based on document analysis, interviews, and participant observation. Through this data I show how the Internet architecture fundamentally changed from the early 1990s up to now, how the Internet protocol community has refused to take impacts on rights and freedoms structurally into account, and how this negatively affected the equality of users and undermined their ability to redesign the Internet in their favor.

Accountability and Emerging Technologies Workshop
2019-02-26 11:00 - 13:00 UTC
Workshop on Accountability and Emerging Technologies, organised by the Compliant and Accountable Systems group at the Computer Lab at Cambridge University and the the Privacy & Sustainable Computing Lab at WU Vienna.

We’re envisaging 2 minute lightning talks from each participant as part of a 2 hour workshop on the aspects of your existing work that could contribute to improving accountability in emerging technologies. The reason we’re doing this is to bring together a range of people from different backgrounds to explore collaborative ways forward on this topic.

The workshop will be taking place at the Alan Turing Institute, British Library, 96 Euston Road, London NW1 2DB. Prior registration is required in order to participate.

David Reichel: The impact of AI and big data on fundamental rights
2019-01-23 14:00 - 15:00 UTC
The presentation will provide an overview of the work of the EU Agency for Fundamental Rights (FRA) in the area of artificial intelligence (AI) and big data. The Agency is working on a project that looks into the positive and negative impact that new technologies, including AI and big data, have on the enjoyment of fundamental rights in the EU. Apart from a general overview on the topic, the presentation will focus on the area of non-discrimination and further on issues related to data quality in machine learning.

First MyData Austria Meetup
2019-01-22 18:30 - 20:30 UTC

CSH Workshop: “Developing Accountable Systems”
2019-01-22 10:00 - 13:00 UTC
This workshop aims to bring together researchers around the topics of bias and accountability in algorithmically aided systems. Specifically we will discuss examples of systems where algorithms can be harmful, how users’ perception and interactions with these services affects outcomes, and finally research ideas and opportunities for designing accountable systems.
The event is jointly organized by the Privacy and Sustainable Computing Lab of WU and the Complexity Science Hub, and will take place in the Hub. The event features short presentations about ongoing research projects while leaving space for open discussions and brain-storming. Discussion will be structured around relevant practical examples, such as algorithmic decision making in job search, route planning services, and the role of algorithms in food delivery services.

Hannah Krasnova: Social Media: The Dark and The Ugly
2019-01-16 13:00 - 15:00 UTC
Abstract: Social Media platforms, such as Facebook, transform the society we live in today: They change the way we present ourselves, communicate with each other and spend our free time. As these platforms are increasingly permeating our daily routines, conversations, and leisure, many stakeholders keep asking about the meaning and long-term consequences of these changes. On the one hand, proponents express strong optimism in their positive value, viewing Social Media as a source of significant benefits at both individual and social levels. At the same time, opponents link Social Media use to the loss of privacy, feelings of inadequacy, and even depression. Our research suggests that the proliferation of envy feelings among SNS members may work as a mechanism behind the negative impact of Social Media on individual well-being. This finding is of tremendous social importance, as it may help to explain an array of negative emotional outcomes linked to Social Media use. Furthermore, spurred by social media, a widespread obsession with mobile devices has recently become obvious. We observe individuals forgo face-to-face communication, parental responsibilities and academic performance in favor of smartphone-enabled communication. Especially, parental addiction emerges as a troublesome development, with many parents neglecting their children and thereby threatening their cognitive and physical development, and above all their safety. Furthermore, students appear to suffer from lower visual and auditory attention when using smartphones during academic lectures. Finally, the loss of privacy has been frequently mentioned as a negative side-effect of Social Media participation. Specifically, a recent outcry surrounding the Cambridge Analytica scandal has triggered a discussion on whether users experience different levels of concern when it comes to the use of their information for political as opposed to product marketing purposes. While media attention around these events suggests elevated levels of concern when it comes to the use of personal user data for political campaigning, our empirical findings are drawing a different picture. Most recent results in this area will be presented during the talk.
About: Hanna Krasnova is a professor of Business Informatics, esp. Social Media and Data Science at the University of Potsdam. Hanna is a principal investigator at the Weizenbaum Institute for the Networked Society: The German Internet Institute, leading the research projects on “Digital Technologies and Well-Being” and “Digital Integration” (www.vernetzung-und-gesellschaft.de). In her research, she addresses the issues of social, individual and enterprise value of social media applications. She is the author of numerous research articles published, among others, in the Information Systems Research, Journal of Information Technology, and Journal of Strategic Information Systems. Her research about Facebook envy has been awarded the Best Paper Award at the International Conference on Wirtschaftsinformatik and has been covered by all major news outlets worldwide. Hanna has also been awarded a prize from the Dalle Molle Foundation.

Linnet Taylor: What's ethical about data ethics?
2019-01-09 14:00 - 15:30 UTC
‘Data ethics can be defined as the branch of ethics that studies and evaluates moral problems related to data, algorithms and corresponding practices, in order to formulate and support morally good solutions’ (Floridi and Taddeo, 2016). Despite the growing calls for ethical behaviour on the part of those gathering, handling and trading digital data, many of the issues that we see emerging are actually problems of power and politics. These have a clear ethical dimension, but asking ethics (or ethicists) to solve them does not provide the kind of leverage necessary. This presentation will ask when and how we should separate out problems of ethics from problems of power, politics and governance, how we might think about the relationships between these perspectives, and how the technical field is currently addressing them.

Lab Annual Meeting 2018
2018-12-19 15:00 - 18:00 UTC
Lab Annual Meeting 2018
**19 December 2018 from 15:00 to 18:00 in room 2.1.103**
(There will also be small nibbles and water/coffee/tea)

Richard Novák: Big Data and Ethics
2018-12-12 13:30 - 15:00 UTC
This thesis will explore the costs and benefits of using Big Data in a context of applied ethics. At the heart of my thesis is the following quote from (Sokol, 2014) and (Boyd & Crawford, 2012).
“Just because it is possible does not make it ethical.“
Insight into complex problems and people’s attitudes towards life is currently driven by advanced technologies such as Big Data and Artificial Intelligence, among others. It means, “Change the instrument, and you will change the entire social theory that goes with them.“ (Latour, 2009). Thus, it is very relevant to discuss Big Data as a socio-technological phenomenon rather than only technological. My focus is on the dualities rising from the conflicts between technological Big Data challenges and relevant ethical principals related to basic human values defined in the Charter of Fundamental rights of the European Union (EU, 2007) and Schwartz Theory (Schwartz, 2012).
A good example of Big Data duality is, e.g., the conflict between insight into complex problems (liberty) and privacy or equality and new digital divide. The thesis has the following structure. Firstly, I will start my research with information about the research of other authors and definitions that are generally accepted. Secondly, I am going to continue with the description of use cases from the telecommunication industry that I will generalize and name the Big Data dualities, positives versus negatives, forming the ethical conflicts. I will verify the relevance of these conflicts by launching an international survey of Big Data and ethics awareness. The Survey research will be focused on two European countries (CZ, SK) and different stakeholders such as university students and IT professionals. Finally, I am going to propose an etiquette that should improve the current ethical environment in the area of Big Data.
Key words
Big Data, conflicts, digital divide, dualities, equality, ethics, etiquette, challenges, law, philosophy, privacy, survey, use cases

Followup: Shermin Voshmgir, Christian Rammel, Martin Wildenberg, Evgeniia Filippova, Valentin Kalinov and Tatjana Novakovic: CryptoMonday – Blockchain and Sustainability
2018-12-05 15:00 - 16:00 UTC
Introduction and State of Project (Shermin Voshmgir & Tatjana Novakovic)

Frontiers in Blockchain Article Series (Evgeniia Filippova)

Presentation of Impact Assessment Tool – This tool will be designed for the purpose of evaluating what projects can be meaningfully implemented, taking both blockchain and sustainability perspective into account (Martin Wildenberg, Christian Rammel and Valentin Kalinov)
